


hurt less

by driv_el



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bellamy is a Hot ER Nurse, Car Accidents, Clarke is Losing Her Shit, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intrusive Thoughts, Modern AU, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Past Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Sexual Content, Sleep Deprivation, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:15:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29171712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driv_el/pseuds/driv_el
Summary: Modern AU.Clarke Griffin is an artist who can't keep her thoughts from twisting around and pulling her into dangerous spirals. Bellamy Blake is an ER nurse who has a history of becoming overly attached to patients.Based on the song Hurt Less by Julien Baker.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 40
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings are in the tags but wanted to preface this with a big content warning for suicidal thoughts and self/harm. This story is quite personal as I struggle with intrusive thoughts and started writing it as a way to get out of my head - things will get better but there's going to be a fair amount of angst before they do. Clarke is going through it, mental health wise, so proceed with caution if you're looking for something light.

__

_I used to never wear a seatbelt  
'Cause I said I didn't care  
What happened  
I didn't see the point  
In trying to save myself  
From an accident _

_Julien Baker, Hurt Less_

Clarke Griffin never wears a seat belt. She drives a beat up 2006 Jeep Wrangler with no doors and the canvas roof folded down. There’s something wrong with her gas tank and every time she fills it up she has to keep a close eye on the gauge or the tank will overfill causing gasoline to splash out. It’s been a long day and she’s distracted and forgets to pay attention. When she hears the click of the pump shutting off, its too late. The liquid hits her legs, splattering onto the denim shorts she’s wearing and into her shoes before it hits the pavement.

She smells like gasoline and wonders if it’s kind of sexy or if she needs to take a shower before she heads into the studio. Her studio share friends are already there because they take their art seriously so she doesn’t backtrack. Raven is always tinkering with some new mechanical component and Murphy has been dabbling with glassblowing lately so it’s not like the studio doesn’t feel like an auto shop.

Clarke hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and she thinks if she tips it to forty or so she might be able to see god. Not in a spiritual way, exactly, more in a metaphysical way. Like she’ll be able to transcend into another dimension of consciousness if she pushes her body far enough. She recognizes this is an unhinged theory. But she’s vibrating and seeing angel numbers everywhere. There’s no harm in testing it out to see if she’s right.

She parks her car and checks her makeup in the rear view mirror. Sometimes she wants to smash all of her mirrors so she doesn’t have to look at herself. It’s not that she doesn’t get positive feedback about her appearance all the damn time. She doesn’t even think she’s unattractive. But when she sees herself, it feels like she’s looking at somebody else. Some stranger with choppy blonde hair and cloudy eyes.

Once she’s transcended she won’t need a body. Again, she knows this is not a normal thing to think. But she kind of believes in the inherent truthiness of it. That humans would be better off without the meat sacks that tether them to the Earth.

Raven and Murphy are sitting next to each other on the huge table in the middle of their studio they use to eat meals and store the shit they don’t want to get covered in paint or glass dust.

When Raven sees Clarke she grins wide and says, “Okay, settle an argument for us.”

Murphy groans and folds his arms over his chest. “I can’t wait to hear Clarke’s take on the gendered dynamics of kissing.”

Clarke ignores his obvious sarcasm. “Well, I can’t argue with that. I’ve gotta give the people what they want.” She climbs onto the table and squishes herself between her two friends, forcing them to move to make room for her hips.

Raven asks, “Okay, so your options are men or women. Who’s better at making out and who’s better at giving hickeys?”

Clarke tilts her head to think for a second before replying, “Making out is definitely women. Necking is… weirdly probably men? In my experience.”

“See!” Raven shouts. “Exactly! Women are amazing at kissing but there’s something about feeling scruff on your neck while someone is biting the shit out of it.”

She and Clarke high five and mouth, “Mind meld,” at the same time

Murphy snorts. “I’m sorry, necking? Are you my grandmother?”

“What do you call it?” Clarke asks, indignant.

“Kissing someone on the neck?” Murphy scoffs.

“Mine has fewer syllables.”

“Okay, but mine doesn’t make me sound like I’m ninety years old and worried about what the youth are getting up to after dark.”

Raven interrupts their bickering by reaching over Clarke and handing Murphy a joint. He takes a drag and offers it to Clarke but she shakes her head. They sit in silence for a while, legs pressing into each others legs. Clarke leans her head on Murphy’s shoulder and he pretends to be annoyed. Her friendship with Raven and Murphy snuck up on her but she thinks she loves them more than anyone she’s ever known.

She’s known Raven since their Catholic high school days- they dated the same boy at the same time in a juvenile attempt at polyamory before they knew how to love themselves, let alone multiple partners. She and Raven never officially dated, but there were threesomes, and the amount of love between them ended up eclipsing whatever feelings existed between them and their mutual boyfriend.

Her friendship with Murphy grew slowly- they knew each other from the Toronto art scene and had mutual acquaintances. When Raven and she had decided they were serious enough about being working artists to rent out a studio space, they’d asked around and ended up with Murphy as their third. He hated how they both refused to wear clothes when it was sticky hot out and he thought their music was shit. Raven and Clarke had so many inside jokes that he would threaten to change the locks when they were cackling over some embarrassing memory.

But he was the one who found Clarke sobbing in the corner after Lexa. He was the one who took her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped and stayed with her until her mom showed up. Murphy and Raven were both obsessed with the same anime and shared a hatred of small talk and bullshit. Soon the inside jokes morphed to be jokes shared between the three of them. They started collaborating once in a while and got accused of being cliquey regularly.

“What are you working on?” Clarke asks them both.

Raven starts explaining her latest creation- a flock of clockwork birds that is meant to hang from the ceiling by golden chains and flutter their wings mechanically. She wants it to be solar powered but is having trouble figuring out how to make it work while still looking delicate and effortless.

Murphy shrugs towards his corner of the room. He’s been making a series of vases to practice his glass blowing skills. He isn’t sure if he wants to make an actual piece or just keep making kitschy items he can sell to tourists and hipsters looking for accent pieces. He and Clarke both make shit they don’t necessarily love so they can earn money, while Raven has (what she calls) artistic integrity.

Clarke is working on a commission- a portrait of someone’s girlfriend for an anniversary gift. They work in silence for a while.

It’s hard to focus and Clarke’s vision is blurring slightly as she paints. Her thoughts are racing. Fragmented. She tries to let herself drift in the sunspots that show up when she squeezes her eyes shut tight. Keeps finding herself in a thought spiral. She’s never had any control over her thoughts- everything gets away from her so easily. The intrusives tell her she needs to atone for her wrongdoings by eating next to nothing or using her nails to scratch bloody marks into her thighs. Or they convince her that she is the only one who can save the world by waking everyone up to whatever global conspiracy she’s fixated on that week.

Her Jeep flies down the highway and she turns the radio to her favorite country station and turns up the volume as loud as she can. She doesn’t see the truck until it’s too late. Her body is pitched through the windshield, glass shattering and slicing through her skin.

For a split second, she thinks she might have succeeded in leaving the physical plane. She’s floating. And then she hits the pavement.

When Clarke opens her eyes, she doesn’t know where she is. Her thoughts are fuzzy, she blinks slowly and tries to orient herself. A man is standing over her, pulling on a tube connected to her arm. He has dark hair that’s curling over his ears. His face is covered in freckles and frown lines. Clarke thinks she might like to paint him sometime.

When she tries to ask for his name, she can’t quite form the words.

He notices her eyes moving. His face immediately transforms into a huge smile and he says, “Welcome back, Clarke.”

She lifts up her arm and catches his wrist before she can understand what she’s doing. His hand grips hers and they stay there for a while, holding onto each other.

“Did I transcend?” she asks.

He laughs. “That’s the morphine.”

“It’s not,” she insists.

Clarke can feel herself being pulled back to whatever void she had awoken from so she tightens her grip on the nurse’s wrist. “Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m Bellamy,” he says.

She dreams of water filling her lungs and black mold growing in her cracked open chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not amazing about updating regularly but I'm going to try hard with this one- it's one of those stories that's been rattling around and won't leave me alone. 
> 
> Comments feed my soul and might make me write faster. ;)


	2. Chapter 2

Once Clarke is fully awake and aware of her surroundings, she’s pissed she made it out alive. She can’t stop making lists of all the expenses she’s going to have when this is over. Her hospital bill-- she can’t remember if her stop gap health insurance she purchased after she was aged out of her mom’s plan is current. Repairs to her Jeep. No income from her part time job teaching middle schoolers about cubism and the color wheel. 

Raven, Murphy, and Clarke have a somewhat official ban on hospitals. It started after Clarke’s brief stint at an inpatient facility cost her over $4,000 and Murphy was taken to the ER instead of urgent care when he broke his finger doing odd jobs and racked up a similar bill. 

Whenever someone did something incredibly idiotic under the influence, they would chant, “No hospitals!” as a mantra. 

But here she is, despite her best efforts. She wonders if she can sue the person who brought her to the emergency room instead of letting her bleed out on the highway for emotional distress. 

Raven is curled up on a small couch in the corner of the room, mumbling in her sleep. Clarke thinks about waking her up so she doesn’t have to be alone with her thoughts but it’s four am and she assumes it took her a long time to get to fall asleep in such an uncomfortable position. 

People keep telling her she’s lucky she survived and she wants to tell them she’s really not but she doesn’t want to end up being transferred to psych once her body heals. Everything hurts-- the doctor on call talks to her once she’s able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time and lets her look at her medical info on his tablet. Broken ribs. A spine injury. Severe concussion. Internal bleeding in the abdomen. 

She sweet talks one of the night nurses on duty into bringing her a mirror. She hates the instant relief that washes over her when she sees herself-- her face is bruised and sliced up, but it’s nothing that won’t heal up with minimal scarring. It’s a sick joke that even while she’s wishing she died in a car crash, she’s worried about her appearance. 

Clarke falls asleep for a bit, but is dragged away from her fitful sleep by a wave of pain that’s stronger than anything she’s ever felt. She puts a hand in her mouth, bites down hard to keep herself from moaning loud enough to wake the entire wing. The call button is hard to reach in her current state and when someone finally comes to check on her, she’s blurry with pain.

With her eyes screwed shut, she hears a distinctive deep voice ask her to label her pain on a scale from 1 to 10. The man from before, the one with the gorgeous hair and goofy smile. It’s definitely the worst physical pain she’s ever been in, but she’s assuming there has to be something worse than what she’s feeling, so she chokes out that she’s at a seven. 

“Can you open your eyes for me?” Bellamy asks. There’s something about the gentleness that tinges his voice that makes Clarke want to fold herself into him. But the light in the room is too much, so she shakes her head, keeps her eyes squeezed shut. 

“So, we’ll say that’s a ten on the pain scale,” he says. “Let me see if I can give you another dose of something to bring your pain down.” She hears him tapping on a device, probably flipping through her chart. “Alright, good news. You’ve got a decent dose of dilaudid heading your way.” 

The medicine travels through her IV and she thinks she can feel the cold in her veins as it starts to flow through her bloodstream. 

Clarke feels a hand brush over the skin on her bare shoulder. Bellamy pulls on the sleeve of her hospital gown, covers her up, carefully.

“I’ll check on you in fifteen to see if it’s kicked in, okay?” 

“Okay,” she manages to reply. 

Light is starting to slide in through the cracked blinds and Clarke watches it crawl across the white walls towards her bed. She tells herself if Bellamy doesn’t come back by the time it’s touching her, she can call for him again. She feels a warmth growing in the center of her chest. The feeling spreads slowly like the light outside: into her arms, her legs, and then continues, leaking outside of her body and splashing the room with yellow. She can’t tell where her body ends and the light begins. 

When Bellamy returns, Clarke is painting on the walls with her mind, dragging an invisible brush through water and color to create a wash of blue on top of the white yellow base. 

They lock eyes and Clarke lights up. “Do you like my painting?” she asks, points to the wall. 

The corner of Bellamy’s mouth quirks up, but he replies, very seriously, “It’s beautiful.” 

Clarke nods, satisfied with herself. She reaches out for his hand and he takes it, amused. She drags her thumb across his knuckles. 

She says, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re, like, inhumanly attractive? Just a cute, cute doctor man.” 

He presses his lips together, holding back a laugh. “Only by car crash victims who are high on pain meds. And I’m actually a cute, cute _nurse_ man.” 

“I resent the implication that I am high right now,” Clarke says. Her tongue feels heavy and her speech is slow. She drops his hand and tries to fold her arms across her chest, but can only sort of lay them awkwardly on her lap. 

“You do, huh?” Bellamy starts to fiddle with the equipment next to her bed. 

Clarke rolls her eyes, pouts. There’s a cut on her upper lip so it hurts a little. “Stop being a nurse for a second and look at me.” 

He lets out a long breath and then looks at Clarke, who is trying to pull her hospital gown down seductively. She’s managed to completely tangle herself in a thin blue blanket and her sheets. 

Bellamy finally lets himself laugh, a short, raspy chuckle that Clarke finds painfully adorable. “You’re going to be a fun one, aren’t you?” he asks. 

He walks over to Raven’s makeshift nest and shakes her gently awake, whispers something in her ear. He gives them both a wave and shakes his head as he walks out of the room. 

Raven pulls up a chair and sits next to Clarke’s bed. “Morning, sunshine,” she says with a sing-song voice. 

Clarke groans. “You made Bellamy leave.” 

“Bellamy left because he has a job to do and you were trying to seduce him,” Raven says. 

“I wasn’t trying to seduce him.” 

Raven gives her one of those patented _I can see right through your bullshit_ looks. 

“Fine, I might have been, just a little bit.” 

“It’s good to see your aggressive flirting style survived the accident.” 

Raven spends the rest of the morning reading Clarke the messages of support people have posted on her Facebook wall. Most of them are generically sweet; Clarke tends to keep most of the people she knows at a generous distance from the core of her. 

There’s a message from her friends Jasper and Monty, a couple she met during a fine arts course she audited whose energy as a pair was so infectious even Clarke couldn’t resist befriending them. It’s posted from Monty’s account but signed by both of them: 

_CLARKE! If we would’ve known you wanted to miss our gallery show this badly, we would’ve given your invite to someone else. No need for the dramatics. Get better fast, we love you Jasper &Monty _

They lose their shit over a message from Luna, one of the artists in their circle that has a known rivalry with Clarke. The word nemesis has been thrown around. More than once. 

_I know there has been some bad blood between us, but I want you to know that the world wouldn’t be the same without you in it. Your art is a gift and I hope you know that I’m constantly inspired by you. Get well soon, Clarke._

They’re still cackling at Luna’s message when they’re interrupted by a call from Clarke’s mom. Raven asks if she wants to take it and Clarke tries to shake her head before remembering the neck brace. Her expression must be answer enough, because Raven takes her phone out of the room and takes the call. 

Clarke and her mom have what one might euphemistically call a complicated relationship. Abby Griffin was an award winning neurosurgeon which meant Clarke grew up with money and most of her childhood memories are of her making microwave dinners and spending hours drawing with a rotating cast of babysitters waiting for her mom to get home from work. 

When Clarke dropped out of med school to become an artist full time, she was cut off from her monthly allowance; something she was mortified to admit she had been receiving as a grown ass woman but that she also relied on to pay her bills. She had to quickly learn how to fend for herself after a lifetime of having a safety net to fall back on. 

Having her safety net yanked away made her scrappy- she found a job as a dishwasher at a trendy restaurant and worked her way up to server before she found her teaching gig. But it also pulled the resentment she felt towards Abby to the surface. She had been taught her whole life that money and resources were synonymous with love. And Abby couldn’t even give that to her. 

“She wants to come visit,” Raven says, returning to the room. 

“Tell her I’m dead,” Clarke says. She’s probably joking but she can’t be sure. 

“I’m not telling Abby you’re dead, Clarke.” 

Lately, her mom has been feeling guilty and emotional about their lack of an emotional bond and shared history. She wanted to spend quality time together- Clarke received invitations to cooking classes and basketball games and board game nights. These are all things Clarke would’ve loved to do with her mom when she was younger, but now it felt like too little too late. Abby had raised Clarke to be fiercely independent, so that’s how Clarke operated. 

Clarke sighs, which makes her chest ache. “I’ll text her.” 

Raven works a 9-5 at an engineering firm so when Clarke insists she doesn’t need to miss another day of work, she plants a kiss on Clarke’s forehead, and heads out. 

Clarke spends the morning listening to podcasts about Buddhist meditation to try and smother her thoughts. The intrusives just louder, saying: _you were supposed to die in the crash so you need to set things right, you are not meant to be here, you are not meant to be alive, you are wasting resources, you are a waste of space, you should have died, you should have died._

She tries chanting a mantra to drown out the voices telling her she needs to grab the nearest sharp object and slice her wrists open. She doesn’t realize she’s saying it out loud until someone loudly clears their throat. Her eyes fly open and Bellamy is standing in the doorframe. 

“I need to take your vitals.” 

He holds a thermometer under her tongue and Clarke tries not to think about how much she wants to reach out and touch his Adam’s apple, his jawline. 

As he’s taking her blood pressure, he asks, “What were you saying before? If you want to share.” 

She can feel the flush creeping up her neck. “Om ah hum,” she says. “It’s um, a transformative blessing. To purify the mind.” 

“You’re so weird,” Bellamy says. He laughs, seems almost giddy at having caught her chanting a Buddhist mantra like her life depended on it. He perches himself on the edge of the mattress, tilts his head. She feels like he can read her thoughts or at least knows that she wants him to kiss her until she can’t breathe. 

He finally stops staring and smirking and says, “Tell me more.” 

Clarke explains the concept of using meditation to go deeper and deeper into your own mind until you have reached complete purity of thought. She expects him to laugh and ruffle her hair like she’s an adorable little freak, but he looks interested, engaged. 

“Melete,” he says. “The ancient Greeks believed you could conquer the unconscious mind through meditation. That if you went deep enough into your thoughts you could control your mind and remove unwanted pieces of your psyche.” 

“Where have you been all my life?” Clarke says it lightly, playfully, but she feels something bubbling in her chest. She feels like she could _know_ him and let herself be known by him. She can also feel heat growing between her thighs. 

“I’m almost glad I didn’t... ” she trails off and makes a throat slitting gesture with her better hand. 

Something clouds his expression. He stands up, runs a hand through his hair. “I should go.” 

“Don’t,” she says. 

He starts to walk away, hesitates, and then turns back. “It’s not something to be flippant about.” 

“What?” 

“You survived.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his scrubs. “How often do you think that happens around here?” 

Clarke wants to tell him that he’s wrong, that she’s not being flippant, that she just doesn’t know how to want to be alive the way most people do. Instead she watches him leave and resigns herself to the fatalistic voices crowding her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! this is going to be a slow burn because of who I am as a person but hopefully it’s worth the ride. As always, comments make my day. <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: description of past character death, gun violence, homophobia, explicit suicidal thoughts and ideation, discussion of self-harm.

The rituals Clarke performs to keep herself at a manageable level of crazy have evolved during her extended hospital stay. An embarrassingly large portion of her mental capacity is focused on Bellamy-- where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with. It feels like he’s avoiding her so she takes long physical therapy walks around the hospital trying to manufacture accidentally bumping into him. 

There’s this preternatural connection she feels between them that forces her to be hyper-aware of his presence. If they’re in the same room or even the same wing, Clarke knows exactly where he is. 

He has to feel it too. It can’t be possible to feel this way about someone and have it be unreciprocated. To feel like they’re holding a piece of your soul that splintered off somewhere without you noticing. 

She runs into him in the hospital cafe. He’s reading _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and is literally highlighting passages as he reads. She sits down at the table across from him. 

He barely looks up from the book to say, “Patients aren’t supposed to be here.” 

“Maybe I want a muffin.” She wants to grab the book out of his hands and slam it shut so he’ll be forced to acknowledge her. 

“Order one for lunch.” 

Clarke bites her lip hard enough to taste blood, reaches over and pushes the top of the book down.

When they make eye contact, Clarke swears she can see into their future. A house with huge windows to let the sunlight in. Bookshelves full of the books he’s always carting around the hospital. Knowing the sounds he makes when he orgasms. Letting him run his fingers over the scars on her thighs. 

He stands, abruptly, and turns on his heel to walk away faster than she can follow with her goddamn spine injury. 

Fuck you, Bellamy, she mutters before trudging back to her room. 

All this longing is overwhelming, consuming. The obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis she received over a decade ago as a strung out teenager had always felt like a misfit label. Depictions of OCD are often about contamination or checking. But ever since Clarke was transferred out of the ICU into her new room, she’s been spending hours reciting poetry until she knows it by memory. This is a compulsion, and she knows this, that it’s a symptom of her faulty brain chemistry. It’s easy to lie to herself and say it’s because she’s in love. 

The days blur together. Clarke is assigned a roommate, a young woman named Hope who has chronic bronchitis and had a collapsed lung that needed to be surgically corrected. Hope has boy short bleach blonde hair and delicate features. She sounds proud when she tells Clarke this is her third lung collapse in the past two years. 

They’re hanging out with Murphy and Hope’s foster mom, Octavia, a striking woman who looks too young to be anybody’s legal guardian. When Clarke first meets her, she think's she's Hope’s sister. 

Octavia is a force; Clarke is a little terrified of her but also desperately wants to be her friend. 

Murphy bangs his hand on Clarke’s hospital tray and announces, “The official third meeting of the Dead Parents Squad is in session.” 

Clarke is used to being the one with the dead dad, so when she found out that Octavia’s mom had died when she was young and that Hope was an orphan she felt instantly bonded to them. Murphy doesn't know if his parents are dead or alive; he’d been in the system since he was five. Hope felt that this embodied the spirit of the Dead Parents Squad, so he was allowed to join. Raven’s parents were technically still alive, but she had cut them out of her life a while back, so she's given an honorary membership and joins in when she isn't working. 

They’re playing Drawful, a goofy drawing game, to pass the time. Hope won’t stop drawing dicks that become more and more elaborate which Octavia hates and Murphy and Clarke find hysterically funny. 

“Add some hair next time,” Clarke suggests. 

Murphy adds, “And warts. Or a really gnarly scar.” 

Octavia rolls her eyes and sighs a deep sigh. “You two are a terrible influence on my sweet little girl. But they’re not wrong,” she says. And then in a complete deadpan, “Maybe add a little jizz spurting out to really sell it.” 

They’re all doubled over in laughter when Bellamy walks through the door. 

“O!” he grumbles. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” 

Octavia shrugs. “Figured you were busy working. Didn’t want to worry you.” 

He heads for Hope and leans in to wrap his arms around her in a huge hug. 

“Hey, Uncle Bellamy,” Hope says. Her tough act has melted, although she looks slightly embarrassed to be showing affection in front of her new friends. 

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says, with a smirk. “Uncle Bellamy?” 

Bellamy folds his arms across his chest. “Oh, good,” he says. “You’re here.” 

“I take it the two of you have met?” Octavia asks. There’s a gleam in her eye as she studies their faces, picking up on the current between them. She leans over and says something to Bellamy that Clarke can’t hear and he goes a little red. 

After finding out that Bellamy is Octavia’s older brother, Murphy extends an invitation to join the Dead Parents Squad. 

“What does that entail?” Bellamy asks. 

“We mostly just play video games and eat snacks,” Murphy says. “Sometimes Clarke recites poetry.” 

“My shift is over, so I’m definitely in for the video games and snacks.” Bellamy squeezes into the armchair Octavia is sitting in and she punches him in the shoulder, but quickly gives in and scoots over to make room. 

The four of them (featuring guest appearances from Bellamy and Raven) spend the next few days playing games and watching TV while Hope provides running commentary. The hospital staff start referring to room 414 as the Party Room. Clarke finds herself laughing harder than she’s laughed in ages and feels more grounded than she has since the accident. 

Occasionally, she sneaks glances at Bellamy and finds him doing the same more than once. Whenever he laughs at something she says, she feels her heart beat a little faster. She wants to tell him she’s sorry for being a semi-stalker and making him feel uncomfortable at work. She also wants to tell him she’s not sorry and that he needs to climb on top of her immediately or there’s a non-zero chance she’ll die of wanting him. 

She learns from conversations with Hope that Octavia is the CEO of a non-profit focused on kids who are aging out of the foster care system or are not quite old enough to be on their own but too old to find adoptive parents and that Hope was one of her clients before she was legally adopted. That Bellamy had a brief stint in juvie for stealing Oxy from a doctor’s office and the volunteering he had to do at a free health clinic is what made him decide to go into nursing. That Hope’s mom died overseas fighting a war she didn’t believe in. 

There are a few times she almost tells Hope about Lexa, but finds herself choking on the words when she tries to bring it up. 

__

Hope is discharged a few days later. She makes a group chat and adds them all to it so they can stay in touch and entertain Clarke with “sick memes and hot goss” while she waits for the doctors to clear her for outpatient physical therapy. 

During her first night alone, the heavy feelings creep back in and Clarke thinks the emptiness of the room is going to swallow her whole. 

Clarke has a recurring dream about the last night Lexa was alive. They’re in Clarke’s Jeep with the top down and the radio turned up so loud the bass line is fuzzy. She pulls into the Seven Eleven parking lot. Leans over to kiss her gorgeous girlfriend, uses a little tongue, tastes the Burt’s Bees chapstick on her lips. In the dream, Lexa smells like cinnamon and honey. Her skin is soft and warm. This time Lexa is wearing this long black dress that clings to her curves and like always, Clarke is desperately in love. 

Some motherfucker in a pickup truck rolls his window down and starts hollering slurs at them and Clarke sees red. She waits until he goes into the convenience store and then hops out of the Jeep. Lexa always begs her to stay in the car, to let it go and drive away. 

It doesn’t always line up perfectly with what actually happened that night, five years ago when Clarke was 21 and a little less broken. Sometimes Clarke is holding a baseball bat and smashes in the truck’s windows. Sometimes she gets into the truck and drives it into the side of the Seven Eleven. Once in a while, she grabs the guy who was catcalling them and chokes him with her bare hands. 

He always has a gun. He always points it at Clarke. Lexa always jumps in front of her as the bullet leaves the chamber. 

When Clarke wakes up, her cheeks are wet and her entire body is shaking. She doesn’t realize she’s muttering, “My fault, it’s my fault” out loud until Bellamy is sitting next to her and she’s sobbing into his chest. 

He shushes her, says, “It’s okay, you’re okay” and traces small circles on her back. 

Clarke wipes her face with her gown; Bellamy doesn’t let go of her as she tries to pull herself together. 

“What can I do?” he asks. 

She can’t drag her eyes away from his lips. It’s probably fucked up that she woke up from a dream about her dead girlfriend and wants to throw herself at someone else. But she’s never claimed to be a good person. She’s selfish and brittle. She wants what she wants. And she wants Bellamy to man up and stop treating her like a fragile thing. 

“Kiss me,” she says. 

His lips crash into hers without warning. 

She growls a little in the back of her throat and bites down on his bottom lip. The sound he makes in response is _excellent_. 

She wants him inside of her; she wants to make him _need_ to be inside of her. 

Her lips part. Bellamy tastes like menthol cigarettes. God, she wants to know everything about him, to see into the core of him. 

Every flick of his tongue feels calculated to drive her fucking insane. She lets him take the lead. Lets him fill her mouth with his saliva and swallows hard. 

When he breaks away from the kiss, he cups her face in his hands. Then leans forward and roughly licks the tear stains from her cheeks. 

Clarke squeaks and pulls his hands down, hungry, places them on her tits and squeezes. 

He pushes the fabric of her gown aside, rolls her nipple between his thumb and index finger. 

“Oh, god,” she breathes. “Please.” 

His fingers slow, teasing. “Please, what?”

She takes his hand and pushes it down until it’s resting on the waistband of her underwear. “Touch me.” 

His hand slides underneath the fabric and rests lightly against her thigh. “Touch you where?” he asks. 

She’s about to reply when the monitor next to her bed starts beeping. 

“Fuck,” Bellamy hisses and yanks his hand away. 

He checks the monitor, sees the low battery signal and swears under his breath. “I’ll be right back.” 

When he returns with the replacement batteries, Clarke is having a panic attack. 

Her mind has twisted her arousal into shame. She needs to offset what she made Bellamy do, she needs to be punished for making him want her when she knows what happens to the people she allows to get close to her. 

“I need to hurt myself,” Clarke whispers. “It’s not going to stop until I do what it says.” 

Bellamy frowns, tells her that there’s a protocol he needs to follow if she’s a danger to herself or others. He moves as if to leave so she grabs his hand and grips it, hard. 

“Please,” she says, “I just… can you stay with me for a while?” 

“Clarke, I need to get someone in here who can help you.” 

“You can help me,” she says. There’s no coming back from falling apart like this in front of him, but she can’t be alone. “Please.” 

He lets out a heavy sigh. “What can I do?” he asks again. 

What she needs is for someone to carve deep into her psyche and remove the part of her mind that wants her to self-destruct. She needs a razor so she can carve red lines into her arms until she can’t feel it anymore, until she’s made up for what she’s done. She needs to go back to the site of the crash and slam her foot on the gas pedal when she sees the car coming towards her so there’s no chance of survival. 

“I need to die,” she says. “I’m not supposed to be here.” She’s shaking and hyperventilating and she can’t stop the ugly words from spilling out of her mouth. “Please, Bellamy, help me. I can’t do this anymore. Please let me die.” 

"You know I'm not going to do that," he says. 

Instead, Bellamy picks up her collection of Rilke’s poetry and reads aloud to her as she sobs. 

His voice is low and soft as he reads, “And you wait. You wait for the one thing that will change your life, make it more than it is-- something wonderful, exceptional, stones awakening, depths open to you.” 

His hand is stroking her hair, gentle, like she’s someone worthy of soft things. 

Clarke falls asleep to the sound of his voice. She doesn’t dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I lied when I said I wasn't great at updating frequently-- this story feels like it's being ripped directly from my chest and onto the page. 
> 
> Stay tuned for pissed off Bellamy vibes and Clarke getting some professional help. 
> 
> Thanks for all the lovely comments, I can't believe y'all are enjoying my trash angsty fic. <3


	4. Chapter 4

When Clarke wakes up, she has about ten minutes of peace before one of her nurses tells her she’s going to ask her a few questions. Her eyes narrow slightly at Niylah when she sits down in the chair that’s still pulled up to the side of Clarke’s bed. 

“What kind of questions?” Clarke asks. 

“Routine mental health screening,” Niylah replies. 

_Fucking Bellamy._ As a reflex, Clarke clenches her teeth and her fingernails dig hard into her palms. 

She tries to keep her voice steady, nonchalant. “I already did that last week.” 

Niylah pushes a stray piece of dishwater blonde hair behind her ear and tightens her ponytail. “It’s routine, Clarke.” She’s normally one of Clarke’s favorite nurses-- she doesn’t have time for bullshit and she’s great at finding a vein on the first try. She’s pretty in a quiet way and sometimes Clarke thinks if Niylah didn’t hold a respectable amount of professional distance between them they could be great friends. But right now Clarke is not in the mood to sit through a bulleted list of questions designed to find out if she’s too crazy to be released into the wild. 

_If it’s so routine, why the fuck do you keep saying the word routine,_ Clarke wants to ask. Instead she takes a slow deep breath, tries to rebuild the icy veneer she wears in situations like this. She’s mad at herself for letting it crack last night, for thinking she saw something in Bellamy she recognized. This is why she doesn’t let people get too close. 

Maybe she should be locked up in psych since she can’t seem to stay away from hungry brown eyes. It’s just that there’s an ache in Bellamy she recognizes when he doesn’t think anyone is looking. It’s the same silver of pain she saw in Lexa. The same ache that people would see in Clarke if they looked past her walls. 

She wonders if Bellamy knows he wears his heart on his sleeve. If he knows she sees him. 

Then again, she might be delusional. Realistically, he was trying to do his job and she threw himself at him. And he stayed, not because he wanted to, but because he had to make sure she didn’t hurt herself before the night shift ended and he could sic Niylah on her. 

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Niylah says, voice soft. It’s missing the usual stern, no nonsense edge which is unsettling. 

“I need to pee.” 

Niylah motions for her to use the washroom and she goes through the arduous process of getting herself out of her bed, untangling her tubes, and maneuvering herself and all of the contraptions she’s connected to into the small washroom. 

She pulls out her phone and grabs Bellamy’s number from the group chat. Texts him, “ _What the actual fuck, Bellamy?”_ Sees the typing dots bubble pop up and then disappear. It reappears and stays for a long time. And then vanishes. She adds, “ _Maybe I should tell your supervisor that you stuck your hand down my pants last night, asshole.”_

His number pops up as an incoming call. Clarke jams the ignore button, splashes water onto her face from the sink, and heads back to her bed. 

“Ready,” Clarke says, after making herself somewhat comfortable. She hopes she sounds bored. 

“Okay, so first question. Over the past month, have you felt down, depressed, or helpless?” 

“No.” 

“Over the past month, have you felt little interest or pleasure in doing things?” 

“Things? What does that even mean?” 

Niylah looks up from her clipboard. “Things you normally enjoy doing.” 

“They’re things I enjoy doing, so no.” 

She nods slightly and writes something down. 

“Would you say you’re a chronic worrier?” 

“Not really.” 

“Do you have any unusual or repetitive thoughts you can’t stop thinking about such as being contaminated by germs?” 

Clarke can feel her breathing quicken. “You have my medical records, right? I was diagnosed with OCD when I was fifteen. So yeah, sometimes. But I know all of the coping skills and it’s manageable.” 

“I have to go through the whole list, Clarke. None of this is a value judgement, okay?” 

The urge to grab her wrist and scratch her nails into her arm until she draws blood is growing with every question Niylah asks her in that infuriating kind voice. “Yeah, okay. Keep going.” 

“Have you ever had suicidal thoughts?” 

Clarke doesn’t answer. Niylah waits patiently. 

She knows if she doesn’t say anything, her answer might as well be yes, please put me on a 72 hour psychiatric hold for my own safety. But she can’t bring herself to choke out anything in response. 

Frustrated tears start streaming down her cheeks. She wants to rip the clipboard out of Niylah’s hands and throw it across the room; she wants to get up out of her hospital bed and put her fist through the drywall. 

“I wasn’t, like, actively trying to die,” she finally says. “But I wasn’t trying to not die. If that makes sense.” 

“Of course it does,” Niylah says. “Depression is an illness just like any other medical condition.” 

“How would you know?” Clarke snaps before she can stop herself. 

The nurse rolls up the long sleeved shirt she’s wearing underneath her light blue scrubs. There’s a criss cross pattern of scars starting at her wrist that continues to the place near the elbow where Niylah’s sleeve has bunched up. “We all want to make sure you’re okay.” 

“Oh.” Clarke thinks she might be… moved. 

“I’m going to recommend one of the psychologists comes and talks with you, okay?” 

Clarke wipes the tears from her face, nods. “Sorry for being a bitch.” 

“Hey,” Niylah says. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Trust me when I say that I’ve been where you are.” 

Her voice is a scratchy whisper. “Does it get better?” 

“Of course it does.” 

\--- 

The psychologist who comes to follow up on Niylah’s initial report seems frazzled. It’s a lot easier for Clarke to convince him that she’s not a danger to herself or others. He signs off on her release paperwork after spending fifteen minutes with her. 

Raven comes to pick her up and listens carefully to all of the home care instructions Niylah rattles off. 

“Promise me you’ll look for a therapist when you get home?” Niylah directs her question at Clarke, but there’s a look that passes between her and Raven that Clarke tries not to take as an attack. 

She reminds herself to breathe in and out to slow down her fight or flight response; tricking her body by regulating her respiratory system is easier than convincing her brain it’s okay to let people care about her. She clutches the folder full of therapist recommendations and coping strategies as she’s wheeled out of room 414 and into the elevator.

“Want to grab late lunch at that taco place you like?” Raven asks as they head to the lobby. 

“God, yes,” Clarke says. “I’m starving. If I ever see another Jello cup, I’ll scream. I’m going to have a marg as big as my face.” 

Raven narrows her eyes. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be drinking with the pain meds you’re on.” 

Clarke pouts. “A marg as big as my fist?” She holds up her good arm, squeezes her hand into a small fist. “Look, my hands are tiny.” 

“I’m not going to look after you if you get fucked up.” 

“Wasn’t asking you to.” 

“You aren’t now, but I know what happens when you’re puking your brains out and there’s nobody there to hold back your hair.” 

“Fine, I’ll have a piña colada.” 

“Those have alcohol in them.” 

“Do they?” Clarke grumbles. “I’m pretty sure they don’t.” 

“Whatever you say, white girl.” 

The sliding doors open and Clarke squints as the sun hits her face directly for the first time in weeks. She stands up from the wheelchair, grabbing Raven’s arm for support. Clarke is still wearing the neck brace for support and her left foot is in a boot, but she feels strong. Like she might be able to recover from the accident with minimal damage after all. 

They’re almost in Raven's car when she sees Bellamy. He’s sitting on a bench near the parking lot, a cigarette between his lips. It’s the first time she’s seen him in clothes that aren’t scrubs. He’s wearing dark jeans with rips in the knee and a dark red t-shirt that’s a little bit too tight around his biceps. 

He sees her staring at him and stands up, starts jogging over to her. 

“Clarke,” he calls, “wait up.” 

“Help,” Clarke hisses under her breath. “I don’t want to talk to him.” 

Raven does not, however, deign to protect Clarke from an uncomfortable ambush. “I’ll wait in the car, babe,” Raven says before she abandons her best friend in the parking lot. 

Clarke turns around slowly and is thrown off by how close Bellamy is standing to her. She can smell the tobacco scent clinging to his person; she can see the flecks of light in his dark eyes. He looks like he wants to strangle her. 

Bellamy holds up his phone, shoves the text messages she sent him earlier at her. “What the fuck, Clarke?” 

She bites her lip until she tastes blood. 

“You can’t say shit like that,” he says. “I could get fired, I could go to _jail_.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

He shakes his head, shoves his phone into his pocket. There’s a vein throbbing in his neck; his fists clench at his sides. “No,” he spits. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to tell me you’re going to fuck up my life and ignore my calls and then stand there with those sad puppy dog eyes and say you’re _sorry_.” 

“Let me explain,” she stammers. “I was scared, I thought they were going to lock me up, I wasn’t thinking straight-” 

“Obviously you weren’t thinking straight.” 

“I thought you wouldn’t do that to me. I thought you understood.” 

Bellamy takes a step closer and Clarke can feel the heat radiating from his body. “What do you want me to say, Clarke? You were talking about hurting yourself. I had to tell someone.” 

She reaches for him without thinking, grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulls him in. “I want you to say you understand.” 

“I do.” He covers her hand with his, presses her palm to his chest. She can feel his heartbeat and she matches his breathing pattern. “But I also know I can’t save somebody who doesn’t want to be saved. I’ve been down that road before and it never ends well.” 

_I want to be saved_ , she thinks. _God, I need you to save me_. But all she can force out are the words, “I think I need you.” 

He lets her hand drop and stares into her eyes like he’s trying to see into the core of her. She feels dizzy and unmoored with the weight of his gaze. If he wanted, he could reach into her ribcage and pull out her bloody, bruised heart. He could shove his fingers in the back of her mouth and all of her repulsive, grimy thoughts would rise like bile in her throat. 

“You should go home,” Bellamy says. 

In the car, on the way to the restaurant, Clarke asks Raven to pull over onto the shoulder of the highway. She stands on the pavement and lets herself scream until her throat is raw. Raven holds her up from behind until she’s silent and shaking uncontrollably. 

She helps Clarke back into the car, starts driving towards the studio. “Let’s go make something.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working on a playlist to use while I write- anyone have any favorite Bellarke song recs?


	5. Chapter 5

Clarke spends the next month in an endless montage of doctor’s office waiting rooms. The healing process for her spinal cord injury is progressing normally, whatever that means. Her physical therapist wants her to use crutches whenever possible, but there are some days she needs to use her wheelchair to get around. The days she isn’t able to get out of bed because of the pain are becoming few and far between. 

Raven has been her saving grace through the beginning of recovery. She was injured during a freak accident when she was a teenager and ended up having her right leg amputated below the knee. 

When Clarke is sobbing because her physical therapy homework feels impossible, Raven grabs her shoulder and says, “I know this fucking sucks, but you have to try.” 

And she can’t blow Raven off and act like she just doesn’t understand. Because she knows how it feels to fall over and clutch the wall after taking half a baby step. She knows how irritating it is when doctors grin and clap at every miniscule milestone. 

It’s a Friday evening, and they’re in the studio with Murphy getting stoned and making art using each other’s tools and mediums. It’s a tradition they’ve created over the past year to help clear their minds when one or all of them are feeling stuck. 

“Do you ever want to grab doors and slam them into someone who’s way too eager to hold it for you?” Clarke asks Raven. 

Murphy throws his hands up. “I thought it was the gentlemanly thing to grab the door for you.” 

“Since when are you a gentleman?” Raven asks. 

“Since Clarke got her spine crunched?” 

“I’m perfectly capable of opening a door,” Clarke counters. 

Murphy is forcing them to use a hand blown glass bong he made the week before. Clarke keeps taking pulls that are too big and coughing which hurts her back. 

She has to admit that his blown glass pieces are starting to become something she would pay real money for, if she had any. He used purple frit, colored smashed up bits of glass to color the bong and then added wisps of blues and greens. His latest project is a sea creature that keeps ending up on the floor as shards of broken glass. Clarke and Raven are worried he’s going to give himself an aneurysm every time he has to pull out the broom and dust pan. 

Tonight, he’s teaching Clarke how to use the glory hole, a kind of intense kiln, to heat up glass. She can’t stop giggling every time he says glory hole. 

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fucking hilarious that one of the most important tools of my craft has the same name as a sex thing,” Murphy grumbles. 

“You know I appreciate how much you love your glory hole, Murphy,” Raven teases. 

Clarke adds, “And I can’t wait for your blowing lessons.” 

“My friends are always asking how I got this sweet studio gig with two hot artist chicks.” Murphy helps Clarke pull her latest attempt out of the glory hole and motions for her to grab the tube and blow into it gently so the glass will expand. “And I always tell them that you two are nightmare people. They never believe me, but I know the truth.” 

Raven laughs. “But you love us.” 

Murphy rolls his eyes. “Sure I do.” But Clarke sees his lip quirk up a bit in confirmation. 

Clarke’s piece of glass is turning into a bubble-shaped thing. Maybe she’ll call it a fish bowl and get a pet fish. 

She looks over to her usual corner of the studio, where Raven appears to be in the middle of an intense battle with a paintbrush and a set of watercolors. The painting she’s creating is angry and visually a bit terrifying-- she’s painted a red and yellow base and is now using thick lines to make what can only be described as a nest of eyeballs and worms. 

When Clarke asks what the hell she’s making, she shrugs and says it’s something from a dream she had a few nights ago. 

They play around for a couple of hours and then Murphy has to leave to meet up with his partner, Emori, whose all-girl punk band, Frikdreina, was playing a show at a dive downtown. He invites them to join, but Clarke doesn’t think she’s up for trying to navigate an inaccessible space. 

Raven offers to give her a ride home, but Clarke decides to stay at the studio to paint a bit, tells them she’ll get an Uber home when she’s done. 

Instead of painting, Clarke lies down on the floor and stares at the ceiling. The weed has muted her pain, slowed down her thoughts a bit. She spends a few meandering moments wondering if wolves think in sounds or images. Or maybe they have an internal monologue in whatever language wolves know? 

And then realizes she is extremely high. 

It’s hard to unlock her phone, but when she manages to enter her passcode correctly, she taps into her contacts. Her finger hovers over Bellamy’s name. 

The phone rings three times. Bellamy answers with, “Clarke?” His voice sounds even deeper over the phone. She thinks the room might be spinning. 

When she doesn’t reply immediately, he asks, “Are you okay?” 

She bites her lip, nods and then realizes he can’t see her so she says, “I’m okay. Are you?” 

He laughs and she can almost see him shaking his head. “I was until I saw your name on the caller ID.” 

“Oh,” Clarke says. “Sorry, I’ll let you go.” 

“No, you don’t have to go. I just thought you might be in trouble.” 

“I’m safe. But I miss your voice.” 

“Here it is.” 

She can hear him breathing into the mic. Her entire body fills with warm, yellow light. “Tell me about your day.” 

“Not much to tell. We had a kid who OD’d on coke laced with fentanyl so most of my day was spent with his mom trying to keep her calm while we waited for the Narcan to do its thing.” 

“Jesus, Bellamy, that’s rough.” 

“It’s my job,” he says. “But it pisses me off that these fucking dealers are selling kids shit that’s laced with god knows what to stretch their supply. Like someone who’s fifteen and an addict is going to be careful. I’m sick of watching kids die.” 

“You can’t save everyone,” Clarke says, her voice soft. 

“I have to try.” 

“The world needs more nurses like you.” 

“That’s nice of you to say, but everyone keeps telling me I need to learn how to be more detached. So I don’t lose myself every time a patient doesn’t make it.” 

“I don’t think empathy is a character flaw.” 

“Tell that to my sponsor.” 

Clarke closes her eyes and imagines Bellamy is lying on the floor next to her, watching the moonlight slide through the windows of the studio, casting shadows on the ceiling. 

“I don’t know why I’m dumping this on you,” Bellamy adds. “But it’s... nice. To talk.” 

The words tumble from her lips before she can bite them back. “Come over.” 

He surprises her by answering without any hesitation, “On my way.”

\--- 

Bellamy is looking at Clarke’s art while she wheels herself back and forth through the empty pathway between her section of the studio, her current version of pacing. 

Her high is fading, so she offers to share a joint but he reminds her he’s sober. She puts it away and lets her thoughts sharpen. The anxiety creeps back in and she’s beginning to question why she invited Bellamy into her sacred space. Wonders why he’s humoring her and whether he’s only here out of a sense of obligation. If he’s here to make sure he doesn’t lose another patient and not because he wants to know her. 

“You made these?” he asks. He’s looking at some of her pre-accident paintings, all oil on 40 x 60 canvas. 

There’s one of Raven, naked on the studio table, looking back over her shoulder at Clarke. Clarke used deep reds and browns as her base and added blackbirds perched on her shoulders, nesting in her hair. A painting of Lexa, her face streaked with black blood and flowers growing from the gunshot wound in her heart. 

He lingers in front of Lexa and asks, “Who is she?” 

“Her name was Lexa,” Clarke says. She wheels toward him, parks her wheelchair next to the painting. “She was my girlfriend. She, um... she died. It was my fault.” 

Bellamy puts a hand on Clarke’s shoulder and rests it there, more gentle than she expected. “She’s beautiful,” he says. “I’m sorry for your loss.” 

“Thank you,” Clarke says. Tears prick the corners of her eyes. It’s been so long since anyone has acknowledged what Clarke lost the day Lexa died. Most of the people in her life either don’t know or don’t know how to talk about it. 

He notices her sketchbook sitting near the sink, touches it to ask for permission and starts flipping through it when she nods. He stops flipping when he reaches a rough sketch of Octavia. Clarke drew her while she was in the hospital but couldn’t quite capture the way the severity of her cheekbones contrasted with the softness of her smile. 

He stares at the drawing as he speaks. “We were in a car crash when O was five and I was eleven. Our mom died on impact. I thought my sister was going to die in my arms. Even now, I can’t stop thinking about-” 

“The blood,” Clarke whispers. 

He looks up, meets her gaze, nods. “I remember sitting there with my sister and trying to stop the bleeding but it just kept coming. I remember thinking there was no way she could lose that much blood and live.” 

“But she did,” Clarke says. “You saved her life.” 

“She was my responsibility. I could never forgive myself if I let something happen to her.” 

“It’s a heavy burden to bear.” 

Bellamy gets down on his knees in front of the wheelchair so he’s in Clarke’s eyeline. He puts on hand on her knee and the other against her cheek and says, “So stop trying to bear it alone.” 

Clarke grabs Bellamy’s shoulder and uses it to push herself up out of the chair. He stands up with her. She asks, “Could you take me to the couch?” 

Bellamy scoops her up into his arms. She presses her head into his chest, counts his heartbeats as he carries her across the room. He sets her onto the couch carefully and she tries not to wince as a jolt of pain shoots up her spine. 

She pulls him down onto the couch and leans into him until their lips are almost touching. 

“Bellamy,” she says. She lets her mouth stay slightly parted and stares brazenly at Bellamy’s lips. They’re chapped and cracked in a few places and all Clarke wants to do is slip her tongue between them. 

He moves his lips but she can’t hear what he’s saying because her head is filled with a high-pitched ringing and she knows the only way to get it to stop is to put her hand on the back of his neck and push his lips into hers. 

The kiss is gentle at first, sweet and almost chaste. Clarke can feel his stubble rub against her chin and when she shifts position to get closer, she can feel the heat radiating from his chest. 

She deepens the kiss and slides her hand down his chest to rest on his waist and he groans as she teases him by hooking her thumb underneath his jeans. 

Bellamy carefully tilts her head to the side and then presses his lips to her neck and sucks until she could swear she’s having an out of body experience. He brings her back to herself when he bites down into the soft skin of her shoulder and she squeaks at the intense rush of pleasure and pain. 

Clarke can’t lift her arms above her head to take off her shirt so she instructs him to reach underneath and unfasten her bra. 

Bellamy pulls her bra out from under her shirt, tosses it on the ground and starts touching her tits over her t-shirt. Once they’re rock hard and Clarke is shaking with need, he takes her hand and guides it to his dick. 

She eagerly unbuttons his pants, slides them off his hips and starts working his cock with her hand. 

“You’re going to have to get yourself off,” Clarke says, realizing her current physical condition doesn’t allow her the range of motion she normally has in situations like this. 

“Alright, princess,” Bellamy says. 

But instead of wrapping his hand around his cock, he painstakingly slides Clarke’s pants off, trying to make sure he doesn’t hurt her as he removes them. 

“Can I get you off first?” he asks. 

Clarke feels her a wet spot soaking through her underwear and all she can do is nod, breathless. 

He drags his index finger over her panties and has a noticeable smirk when he notices how wet she is through the thin fabric. “Fuck, baby.” Bellamy’s hand stills. “You don’t like this much, do you?” 

“I do,” Clarke gasps. “I love it, please, Bellamy.” 

He pushes her underwear to the side and slides two fingers inside of her. It only takes a few minutes of him fingering her with one hand and teasing her clit with the other for her to come around his fingers, hard. She’s whimpering and her thighs are trembling when he pushes her mouth open and lets her taste herself. 

“Come on me?” she asks, motions to her breasts. 

He nods, something feral in his expression, and pushes her shirt up. 

They don’t break eye contact until Bellamy’s eyes screw shut as he orgasms and Clarke feels his wetness land on her chest. He reaches for her, rubs his cum over and in between her tits. 

Clarke repositions herself so she’s lying down, her head in Bellamy’s lap. He runs his fingers through her hair and she sighs, takes one of his hands in hers and traces the lines on his palm. 

“Don’t leave me,” Clarke says. Her eyelids are heavy, she thinks she’s about to fall asleep. 

“I won’t,” Bellamy replies. 

When Clarke wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the windows, Bellamy is holding her. He’s also snoring. She doesn’t move until he wakes up, grumbles about how she really needs to get some blinds for the windows, and kisses the top of her head. 

_Oh no,_ she thinks. _Here it comes. Another love I’ll never recover from._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me a couple of chapters ago: clarke is going to go to therapy soon!  
> me writing this chapter: jk she's just going to fuck bellamy and fall head over heels instead of working on her problems 
> 
> more angst to come, but also more smut 
> 
> thank you for all the lovely comments, they make me so happy :')


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter- the middle part is based on Clarke's hallucinations during Red Sun Rising and deals with suicidal thoughts. This is the last heavy heavy chapter before things start looking up.

They find a dead bird outside the studio. She is small and brown; her fuzzy red belly has been picked open and her insides are spilling out. The pavement underneath the robin is stained with a rust colored splotch. Clarke knows the bird is a warning: she is not someone who is safe to love. 

Bellamy is, at his core, _good._ He cares hard-- bares his heart with every facial expression, the resonance of his voice giving away how soft he is as he moves through a cruel world. She knows he cries after every patient death and carries them with him as he moves through the world. That he clings to his sobriety like it’s a frayed rope and he’s dangling over the cliffside. If she tries to get close, she will unravel him. Turn his insides to black sludge as she consumes everything that is lovely inside him with her insatiable need. Her love will ruin him. 

Clarke is going to faint, or fall-- her crutches hit the ground with a clatter. Grabbing Bellamy to steady herself is not allowed, but she still reaches for him. He catches her, holds her up. 

“Hey,” he says, when he sees the look on her face. “It’s okay.” 

But it isn’t. Clarke can’t take in enough air to fill her lungs and she can’t remember any of the coping strategies from the stupid packet Niylah gave her. 

_You have to reverse this._ Clarke takes a step backwards, away from Bellamy. _It’s not too late to undo what happened last night. So nobody else gets hurt because of you._

She manages to sit down on the bench outside the studio. “No,” she whispers. “I’m trying, please, I’m trying.” She’s tapping her leg in a pattern of threes to try and pull herself out of the spiral. Her eyes are closed. 

Bellamy asks, “Clarke, are you having a panic attack?” 

She doesn’t stop counting. Squeezes her eyes shut even tighter, covers her face with her hands. 

Bellamy walks slowly toward the bench and sits down on the opposite end, taking care not to accidentally touch her. “I need you to take some deep breaths for me, okay?” he says. He’s using his nurse voice, a voice she recognizes from the hospital when he’d tell her it was time for her meds or physical therapy. 

“I know how deep breathing works.” She’s trying to sound sarcastic or at least glib but instead she’s speaking through gasping breaths. Her ribs hurt as she tries to suck in enough air. 

“Can I put my hands on your shoulders?” Bellamy asks. 

Clarke hesitates, then nods. He turns her body towards him slowly. 

“We’re going to breathe together, alright? In for five, out for five. Through your nose if you can.” 

They spend the next few minutes taking slow deep breaths. When Clarke’s shoulders lift slightly, Bellamy’s follow. Her lungs inflate, his do too. They let go of the air and then breathe in each other’s exhales. 

“What you’re feeling is scary, but there’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you.” 

Tears are leaking from the corners of Clarke’s eyes. Bellamy carefully brushes them from her cheeks. 

Her head is buzzing with a sense of purpose. She knows what she needs to do, knows how to make things right. But first, she wants to kiss him one last time. 

He tastes like salt. 

She takes his hand in hers, turns it over so his hand is facing up. Presses two fingers to his wrist and feels the thrum of his pulse. 

“Thank you, Bell,” Clarke says. 

“Anytime.” 

After he’s gone, Clarke heads back into the studio and starts looking for a knife. 

The first OCD symptoms appeared after her dad died when she was fourteen. He had a minor stroke in the middle of the night while Clarke was sleeping. Abby didn’t wake her up before she rushed him to the hospital. He was dead before the sun rose and when Clarke woke up the house was empty. 

Abby tried to explain that she didn’t want to worry her, that she thought Jake would be fine and Clarke could visit him in the morning. She still hasn’t forgiven her mother for robbing her of the chance to say goodbye, to hold her dad’s hand in the hospital, to tell him how much she loved him. 

She didn’t sleep for three days afterwards, convinced that if she fell asleep something horrible would happen. That Abby would die, or her best friend, Wells, or she would wake up in the morning and be the only human being left on Earth. So she found ways to stay awake: energy drinks, dunking her head into a sink full of ice cold water, biting the backs of her hands until they were covered in angry, red teeth marks. 

At the funeral, Clarke was delirious-- she appointed herself to the necessary job of making sure everyone was protected. She screened each person who entered the church for stroke symptoms, repeated a protective spell she found on a Wicca forum under her breath until the words were jumbled and meaningless. Well meaning relatives and family friends told her she needed to be strong for her mom, as if she wasn’t the one keeping everyone in the room from imminent danger. 

Abby took her to a child psychologist when she found Clarke doing what she called “blood magic” in the bathtub, a series of intricate rituals involving a pair of safety scissors and essential oils. 

The diagnosis: obsessive-compulsive disorder with absent insight and delusional beliefs. 

The treatment plan: cognitive behavioral therapy (which Clarke hated because her therapist kept calling her thoughts “irrational”) and a prescription for sertraline (which Clarke hated because it made her gain weight). 

She flushed her meds two years later when Wells was diagnosed with leukemia and refused to go back to therapy when he didn’t beat the cancer in his blood.

It wasn’t hard to convince Abby that she was functioning at a healthy level; all she needed to do was get good grades, be involved in a long list of extracurriculars which included Model U.N. and varsity volleyball, and keep her warped thoughts to herself. 

Clarke is spinning the fuck out over what happened with Bellamy-- how she let him into her pants, into her _head_ , knowing what happens to the people she loves. There’s a part of her that wants him so badly her heart physically aches; it’s the same part of her that thinks he could save her from herself, that they could be stronger together. 

But the part of her that knows she’s dangerous is louder.

She finds a knife in Murphy’s cluttered workspace, grips it so hard her knuckles turn white. Thinks about breathing with Bellamy, pretends he’s there with her for the ins and outs. 

_No one is safe around you. You infect people and Bellamy is next. Take out the knife. Put it to your throat._

Clarke looks around for a book, any book, grabs a book of Richard Siken poetry that Murphy appears to be using as a coaster. Flips it open and reads “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” in a fevered whisper. 

“Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all forgiven, even though we didn’t deserve it.” 

_There’s only one way to stop it._

“Forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.” 

_Make sure you sever the carotid._

“Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany, in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is.” 

_You’re a cancer, Clarke, and you know what we do to cancer._

The book falls to the floor. Clarke presses the knife against her throat. 

Murphy walks through the door and sees Clarke, sees the knife. 

“Hey, Clarke. Clarke. Listen to me. Put the knife down.” 

_Finish what you started. Do it. Now._

The knife hits the floor with a metallic thud. Murphy is holding Clarke from behind, his arms wrapped tight around her as she tries and fails to pick up the knife. 

“No!” she screams. “Murphy, let me go!” 

“I’m not gonna do that,” he says. 

She tries to squirm out of his grip but pain sears through her back as she struggles. “Get off of me!” 

Clarke frees one of her arms and elbows Murphy in the chest. 

The door opens again and Raven walks through, takes in the scene in front of her. “What the hell is going on?” 

“Get that knife out of here,” Murphy says. “And then call 911. She’s trying to hurt herself.” 

Clark begs, “No hospitals.” 

Raven picks up the knife, shoves it into her backpack, and then kneels on the ground to make eye contact with Clarke. “You can either get in my car and we will drive you to the emergency room or I will call 911 and an ambulance will take you to the emergency room.” 

Clarke is so tired. She doesn’t think she can fight anymore. So she lets them lead her to Raven’s car and they go back to the hospital. 

After waiting for two hours in the ER waiting room, a nurse Clarke doesn’t recognize her leads her to an exam room. She has her change into a hospital gown, takes her temperature, asks her if she wants to hurt herself, if she wants to kill herself, if she has a plan for how she’ll do it. 

Clarke answers yes to all of her questions. 

She hears the nurse tell Murphy and Raven that she’s going to be put on a 24 hour psych hold. Everything in her is screaming that she needs to figure out how to finish what she started before more people get involved. She tries to run so they give her something, a sedative to knock her out so they can get her into her room without a struggle. 

When she wakes, her mouth is dry and her head is fuzzy. The room is empty so she hits the nurse’s button to ask for water. 

A minute or so later, she’s greeted by Niylah, who is carrying a cup filled with water and crushed ice. 

“Hello, Clarke,” Niylah says, hands her the water with a soft smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you back here so soon.” 

Clarke takes the cup of water with shaking hands, spills a little on the front of her hospital gown. “Thank you.” 

“You’re scheduled to meet with a psychologist in the morning,” Niylah tells her. “For a real appointment this time. I wanted to give you a heads up so you aren’t caught off guard.” 

Clarke bites down on some ice with a satisfying crunching sound. “Okay.” 

“Your friends are worried.” 

“I know.” 

Niylah sighs. “This might be unprofessional of me to say, but I really don’t want to see you here again in a few weeks.” 

“Wow, rude,” Clarke says. She’s able to muster up a small smile. She impulsively reaches out, grabs Niylah’s hand, and squeezes. “Thank you. For tonight, and for the last time I was here.” 

“Just doing my job. Hit the button if you need anything, okay? I’m here all night.” 

“Sure I won’t be bothering you?” 

Niylah gives her one of those knowing looks. “It’s okay to need people, Clarke.” 

\--- 

The psychologist shows up around 10am the next morning, which is, in Clarke’s opinion, far too early to be talking about her trauma and compulsions with a stranger. The name on his coat says Dr. Jackson but he introduces himself as Eric. 

“I’m not a huge small talk person,” he says, “but if you have any pleasantries you want to get out of the way before we get into it, hit me with them.” 

Clarke laughs, in spite of herself. “I’m sure you know I’m here because I tried to slit my throat with a pocketknife, so I’m not that worried about the weather or the local sports team.” 

“Diving right in then,” he replies. “I know you’re probably sick of answering these questions, but let’s go over your medical history.” 

There’s something about him that relaxes her, makes her open up a little more than she would with most doctors. She tells him about the death that surrounds her and the intrusive thoughts that led her to being hospitalized. Two hours pass before she realizes she’s been talking for that long. She feels… lighter. 

Eric stands up, flips his notebook closed. “I don’t want to keep you here any longer than I have to, especially since you were just stuck here after your car accident. You have a few options. I could check you in to an inpatient program, if you think you’re going to try to hurt yourself again. Or I can recommend you get transferred to an intensive outpatient program. You’d come five days a week for a month, do group therapy, come up with a treatment plan.” 

Clarke bites her lip. “The second one sounds better? But I’m supposed to start work again next week.” 

“We can figure something out. And it’s a great sign you’re thinking about work right now. Let me go file the paperwork and hopefully we can get you out of here soon.” 

Raven picks Clarke up and takes her back to her apartment where the Dead Parents Squad has apparently been assigned shifts to stay with Clarke for the next couple of days. When she protests that she doesn’t need a babysitter, Octavia tells her to shut up and play Animal Crossing with her or else. 

She spends the afternoon in her tiny one bedroom surrounded by friends. Murphy makes her piss with the door open and Hope goes rummaging through all of her drawers looking for sharp things. Which is irritating but also makes her want to cry with relief. To know that there are people in her life who know her ugliest thoughts and still want to be around her. 

Bellamy is working an overnight and she doesn’t want him to hear about her latest hospital trip through the grapevine. She sends him a text: _Thanks for yesterday morning. Don’t know if you heard but I lost my shit a little bit after you left. Am safe now. Hanging with your sister and co. Talk soon?_

He responds right away. _She told me you suck at Animal Crossing._

_It isn’t possible to suck at Animal Crossing._

_I wouldn’t put it past you, Griffin._

She watches the dots as he types and then adds, _I’m glad you’re safe. Talk soon._

Clarke tells the intrusive thoughts that try to push their way to the front of her mind to fuck off and lets warmth bubble up in her chest instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so damn hard to write but I'm excited to share it with y'all. Planning on wrapping this fic up with 10 chapters so we're over halfway to a beautiful ending. <3


	7. Chapter 7

Clarke wakes up the next morning sandwiched in between Raven and Murphy. Raven’s mouth is open slightly and she’s drooling on Clarke’s favorite pillow. Murphy has an arm draped over her-- it almost feels protective. If she didn’t know better, she’d think Murphy was holding her while she slept. 

She gives Raven a sloppy smooch on the cheek, runs a hand through Murphy’s hair. Neither of them reacts so Clarke carefully slides herself off the edge of the bed so she doesn’t wake them. 

After she pads into the kitchen, she puts a record on, starts the kettle boiling so she can use her French press for the first time in weeks. Dances around the kitchen in her underwear and one of Raven’s see-through shawl things. Starts mixing up pancake batter and rummages through her sparse cabinets until she finds the chocolate chips. 

She’s singing along to The Chicks, using a spatula as a microphone, when she does a little shimmy and spin and sees Bellamy standing in her kitchen, an easy smile on his face. 

Her mouth snaps shut, she stops dancing. “Hi,” she says. 

“Don’t stop,” he replies. “You look cute like this, all domestic.” 

Clarke notices he’s holding a bouquet of daisies wrapped in green plastic. She steps toward him, blushing slightly when she realizes she’s barely dressed. “For me?” 

“Wasn’t sure which flowers one traditionally gives after a friend tries to off themselves, so I made a guess.” 

“I think the customary gift is cash, actually.” 

“Shit,” Bellamy says. “I don’t think the Hy-Vee florist takes returns.” 

Clarke takes the flowers from him and hunts down a tall drinking glass to use as a vase. She sets them on her counter. 

Bellamy is wearing a leather jacket and his curls look damp, like he was just in the shower. Her heart is doing what it always does when they’re in the same room-- reaching out for him, hoping he’s reaching back. 

It’s hard not to notice that he’s staring at her, raking his eyes over her body in the dim kitchen light. He steps toward her, pushes the shawl out of the way, and runs his thumb over the thin white scars that crisscross her thighs. 

There’s concern on his face, but Clarke thinks she sees something else too. Desire. A yearning that she recognizes. 

He presses her up against the counter, kisses her softly as the music runs out and the only sounds are the fuzz on the speakers and the needle clicking as the record turns. 

And this feels like it could be the life she’s meant to have. Coffee brewing and neglected pancake batter and sunlight pouring in through the windows. Bellamy’s lips on hers and his hands around her waist. The ache in her chest and the ache between her legs. 

They break apart and Clarke’s thoughts start to race. 

After a slow breath in and out, she takes a step back. “Bellamy,” she says. “I don’t think I can be with you until I get my head sorted.” 

He pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Whatever you need, Clarke. I can wait.”

“I don’t want you to have to sit around waiting for me to get my shit together. I don’t know when I’ll be able to… when I’ll be able to let someone in without falling apart. Can we just… be friends? I really want to be your friend, Bell.”  _ I can’t lose you. I can’t not have you in my life.  _

He hesitates for a second, then nods, steps back. “ We're friends. But that doesn't mean I can't wait for you to be ready for something more.” His mouth quirks up into half of a smile. “It would make it easier if you put on some clothes.” 

Clarke squeaks. She knows her face is probably bright red. She runs to her bedroom and yanks on a pair of jeans she finds on the floor and grabs a clean t-shirt. She shakes Raven and Murphy awake and tells them to come to the kitchen for breakfast. 

Bellamy has taken over the pancake making operation so Clarke flips the record over and sits on the couch with her sketchbook. 

She draws a rough comic of the morning: Murphy ribbing Bellamy for bringing flowers, Raven insisting on her chocolate chips being arranged in a smiley face. The last panel is of her and Bellamy sitting on opposite sides of the room, a beam soft yellow light radiating from their hearts, connecting them. 

The idyllic morning is interrupted by a loud honking coming from the parking lot. Clarke figures it’s for someone else in the apartment complex-- most of her people are here, in her living room. But her phone starts to ring. 

The caller ID reads “Abby.”  _ Fuck _ . 

Clarke stretches her leg out to kick Raven. “Any chance you know why my mom is calling me right now?” 

“How should I know?” Raven says, but she’s smirking. 

“I know you and Abby are weirdly close, but I swear to god, if you told her about last night-” 

“Clarke,” Raven interrupts. “Chill. Just go downstairs.” 

She leaves her apartment without her crutches and makes her way to the elevator. When she reaches the ground floor, she sees Abby sitting in the front seat of a white Jeep. Her white Jeep. 

Clarke makes her way to the parking lot, ignores the ache in her back. “Is that my baby?” she asks before she can bite her tongue. 

“I was going to ask the same thing,” Abby says. “Let me look at you.” 

Abby comes in for a hug and Clarke goes stiff. 

“I can’t hug my only daughter?” Abby asks when she lets go. “And wipe that scowl off of your face. You’ll get frown lines.” 

“You think I’m worried about frown lines,” Clarke says, deadpan. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got more important things to focus on.” She’s been able to walk on her own for a week or so and isn’t wearing the neck brace anymore, but she’s still got a boot on her injured foot and she still has a few impressive bruises in varying shades of purples and greens. 

Sometimes Clarke wishes she got along with her mom. That somewhere along the way she was able to let go of the resentment she had been nursing since her dad died. Or that she could at least let her guard down long enough to do things normal girls did with their moms. Like talk about the man she met in the hospital and how she felt like she was flying or falling and she had no idea how to tell the difference. Or go shopping for a new outfit for her first day back to school. 

But she knew what Abby would say about Bellamy. She’d ask if Clarke really thought this surly nurse was the best she could do, if she thought he’d be able to provide her the kind of life she was accustomed to. And if they went shopping, Abby would pick at her appearance until she wanted to claw her way out of her skin. 

Her mom is pressing her lips together and Clarke has the mean thought that Abby should’ve been more concerned about own frown lines. 

Abby says, “So I know you haven’t wanted to see me. But I wanted to do something for you after I heard about your accident. And Raven said you were devastated about your car, so I had it fixed up. Cost more than buying a whole new car, but I know how sentimental you are.” 

Clarke doesn’t want to be grateful, but she can’t deny how relieved she is to see her Jeep sitting there in one piece. It almost looked like the accident never happened. 

“Thanks, Abby,” she says, quiet. 

“I wish you’d call me mom.” Clarke digs her fingernails into her palm to fight back a snarky response. Her mom had thought it was adorable when Clarke called her Abby as a kid. Figures she feels sappy about not hearing the word mom now that they’re barely on speaking terms. “Can we grab dinner sometime?” 

Clarke wants to say she can’t be bought, but she can’t wait to get her hands on the steering wheel and drive with the top down, lead foot on the gas pedal. 

“Sure,” Clarke says. “I’ll text you, okay?” She’ll need to ask Raven to come along as a buffer. 

Upstairs, her friends are doing the dishes and making fun of Clarke’s record collection, which is mostly music that belonged to her dad and every Taylor Swift album except for debut which was criminally impossible to find on vinyl. 

She jingles the car keys and asks, “Who wants to take me for a drive?” 

Raven and Murphy exchange a glance and Murphy shoves Bellamy towards Clarke like they’re in sixth grade. And then Raven snickers, also like they’re in sixth grade. Clarke sticks her tongue out at them. 

“Guess I’ve been nominated,” Bellamy says. He snatches the keys out of Clarke’s hand and asks, “Where are we headed?” 

“Anywhere.” 

She climbs into the passenger seat and Bellamy adjusts the rear view mirror. 

Clarke taps the dashboard four times for luck but it doesn’t feel like enough so she asks Bellamy if he can do it too for good measure. His eyes stay on her as he raps his knuckles on the dash. 

She doesn’t fasten her seatbelt out of habit. When Bellamy tells her to buckle up, she realises she can’t lift her arm enough to grab it.

Bellamy leans over, grabs the passenger side seat belt and pulls it over her, clicks it in place. Clarke holds her breath as his arm brushes across her chest and hopes he can’t hear the shaky exhale she releases when he isn’t touching her anymore. 

He turns the radio on, flips through her presets before tuning it to an alternative station she doesn’t usually listen to, cranks the volume. And then he drives. 

They fly down the highway. Bellamy sings along to the radio, his voice husky and a little off key. Clarke spends the drive alternating between feeling giddy with the wind in her hair and feeling a desperate need to reach out and touch Bellamy’s hand. 

After half an hour of driving, Bellamy leaves the highway on a side road and after a few minutes they hit gravel. Clarke coughs, the dust kicked up by the tires covering her with a thin layer of grime. She grabs a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment and slips them on.. There’s a dark blue baseball cap that belonged to her dad in the glove box and she grabs it and shoves it onto Bellamy’s head to protect his eyes. 

“Where the hell are you taking me, Blake?” 

“You’ll see.” 

The alternative station they’re listening to cuts out and Clarke triumphantly changes it to a country station that’s playing one of her favorite songs. 

Bellamy stops suddenly, pulls into a makeshift parking space. They’re at the lake, parked on an overpass overlooking the water. The sun glitters on the small waves the wind creates. 

“God, it’s beautiful here.” Clarke wants to say more, to say that he looks beautiful in her dad’s beat up hat, that she wants to run her fingernails up and down his forearm so she can feel him shiver. 

“O and I used to ditch and come here when she was having a bad day at school.” 

“You and your sister are close, huh?” 

“Our foster mom worked nights so she wasn’t around much. It was just me and Octavia most of the time. So I ended up being the one who took care of her. Now she’s all grown up and has Hope to take care of. Says she understands me now. Why I was so protective of her growing up.” 

Bellamy pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, offers Clarke one. She waits until his is lit, leans forward until the ends are touching. Sucks in to steal a spark. 

“What about you?” 

“Only child. But I grew up with a family friend who was around so much he might as well have been my brother.” 

“Where’s he now?” 

“Gone. Cancer. If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of cursed. People tend to die when I’m around.”

“I know the feeling.” 

Clarke doesn’t know how he does it, but Bellamy can look at her and pull her deepest darkest secrets out from the twisted place in her gut where she stores the things that scare her, that make her feel ashamed. 

She tells him about the first time she met Lexa in a dive bar sophomore year of university, when they were both nineteen and careless with their hearts. Describes the way her hair was in these intricate braids and the shoving match they got into after Clarke kissed a girl who was technically on a date with Lexa. Told him how their first kiss a month later felt like coming home. 

Bellamy tells her about a woman he met in his third attempt at rehab. Her name was Echo and they tried to love each other before they confronted their addictions. It ended with a series of ultimatums: Echo couldn’t give up the booze and he couldn’t give up the pills. 

He admits that he still wakes up every morning and thinks about how easy it would be to steal narcotics from the hospital and let himself drift away. She explains the cutting and the biting and the compulsion to starve herself, the way the voices in her head won’t ease up until she does what they want. 

Their demons aren’t that different. Both of them trying to silence the dark voices in their minds. She feels like he was built for her, like their brains are wired the same. Like they’re two halves of a whole. 

“This is going to sound unhinged, but I think we were supposed to meet,” Clarke says. 

He laughs. “I don’t really believe in fate.” 

Clarke presses a hand to his cheek, leans into him. “But Bell, don’t you feel it?” 

He traces her lips with his index finger, pulls her in so her head is resting on his chest. “Of course I feel it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eep, sorry for the long wait between updates. Work has been slammed, etc. etc. But I have some vacation time coming up and will hopefully get a lot of writing done this weekend. 
> 
> Comments and kudos feed my soul, as always. <3 Also if you write Bellarke, let me know so I can return the favor and read your lovely words.


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